View from The Pack

By Bill Hadgkiss

What a weekend for Brighton & Hove which was witness to one of the greatest upsets in Rugby World Cup history when Japan beat South Africa on Saturday 19 September.

The sun shone from a clear blue sky throughout the weekend and the Brighton Community Stadium was full on both days with supporters wearing their country's colours and waving thousands of national flags distributed by members of The Pack.

Pack members were ready at the stadium to help match goers
Photo credit: www.snapitnow.co.uk

The role myself and other Pack members were responsible for was to give our visiting spectators a memorable experience from the time they arrived in the city until their departure. 

Fans in the stadium
Photo credit: www.snapitnow.co.uk

I was fortunate in being based at the Stadium on both days and undertook a variety of functions including meet and greet fans arriving on the shuttle buses from the Fanzone and Park and Rides, distributing flags, duties at stadium entrance gates regarding bag checks and separating tickets for scanning, marshalling queues post-match into channels for the various Park and Ride departure points and helping spectators with restricted movement from arrival points to the stadium entrance.

There were several memorable moments. Two elderly gentlemen with walking sticks arrived on a Park and Ride bus because their lift to the Stadium had not turned up. They were quite anxious by they time they arrived. I was able to collect two wheelchairs from our information point and, with a colleague, take them to their seating area. I then arranged their return journey to the P & R after the match. 

Fans waved homemade banners and flags handed out by the Pack
Photo credit: www.snapitnow.co.uk

One Samoan spectator gave me a match ticket since his friend was unable to come and asked me to find a good home for it. I took it to the ticket office where it was passed to a very happy fan who was ticketless! 

Bill in the stadium gallery

As we were not needed during the match, we all watched from a gallery near to the Workforce Centre. During the final 15 minutes of the South Africa v Japan game and the scenes at the final whistle were incredible. Every neutral in the stadium were willing the Japanese to achieve the impossible...and of course they did!

There is no doubt at all the Brighton Community Stadium, their staff, Rugby World Cup 2015 and members of The Pack made this event truly memorable, this being acknowledged by many, many spectators that I spoke to after the match. I thoroughly enjoyed every single minute and the memories will last a long time!